Star Trek, as an idea or concept, has pervaded throughout popular
culture, at least in North America. The franchise generates an
incredible amount of fanfare, paraphernalia and profit, so it comes
to no surprise Star Trek has always tried to lodge itself into games.
Starfleet Command 2: Empires at War (SC2) is a follow up to what
people previously touted as one of the first "true" Star Trek games
aimed at simulating combat between those behemoth ships you
see on TV. The year 2000 heralded many Star Trek games
including first person shooters and even a card-trading game
based on the Star Trek universe. Surprisingly enough, many of
these Star Trek licenses are used well, finally creating games
worthy of the Star Trek name. SC2 continues this tradition,
developed by Taldren, the crew in 14 Degrees East that created
the original Starfleet Command, and published by Interplay, no
small stranger to the Star Trek world themselves (a la the Star Trek
25th Anniversary adventures).

The basic premise behind SC2 is to put the player behind a
starship from several races, including the Klingon, Romulan,
Mirak, Lyran, Gorn, Hydran, ISC and of course the Federation
itself. Each race comes with its own set of voices, menu art,
interface and ships. The developers are able to handle the
diversity of all these mainly because all the races derive their
power from starbases, perform the same missions and use the
same classes of ships namely: frigates, light cruisers, heavy
cruisers, dreadnaughts and starbases. From race to race, the
differences are cosmetic but each race also has a specific
preference for outfitting their ships. For example, the Gorn have
extremely immobile ships but make it up with their heavy
armament, while the Mirak prefer to launch barrages of missiles
instead of the usual phaser or energy weapons of the Star Trek
universe. Make no mistake about it, this game is not about away
missions, human drama or engineering creative solutions to
problems, its focus is directly on combat. Thus, all missions, be it
patrol, convoy escort, encounters, or otherwise, will eventually rest
on combat. That is not to say this game is limited in any way
because the developers have managed to make combat in this
game fun. Previous attempts at modeling Star Trek have turned
sour because either the crewmen do everything for you (which
makes for a very boring game) or the ships control like fighter craft
from Wing Commander. SC2 is the first game I've played that has
got the Star Trek feel right. There are many references throughout
the game towards the navy. The game uses terms like port, bow,
aft, stern, and for good reason: SC2 plays very much like a WWI or
WWII naval battle. Combat rests on jockeying for good positions,
like lining up your rack of unexpended guns alongside your target.
There are also times when you want to manoeuvre your vessel in
order for your strongest shields to bear the brunt of the enemy
attack. Often you'll suffer damage or need to launch sensor probes
to seek out the enemy. SC2 allows you to directly command up to
three vessels that can be paired up with allied craft.

What makes SC2 interesting is not the WWI/WWII juggernaut vs.
juggernaut battles but the variations that are added by each race.
The Federation have the best balanced ships and their sensor
range is remarkable. Most people will probably stick with the
Federation since sensors, believe it or not, are incredibly
important in hunting down the enemy. Without sensors, one is
almost blind in space. Luckily, each ship is outfitted with a deep
space scan (at the expense of extra power) or you can launch
manual probes to sweep out the area around you. Quite simply
put, if you can't see the enemy, even a behemoth dreadnaught can
be taken down by a mere frigate. Once you take down a ship's
shields you have the option of launching hit and run operations on
specific components, like destroying specific weapons or ship
subsystems. Moreover, you can attempt to board and capture the
ship with a cadre of marines. Finally, SC2 adds a new wrinkle to
Star Trek combat by including shuttles and fighter craft that harass, defend,
attack or even make suicide runs at the larger craft. Once you see
the full range of carriers, frigates and destroyers in action, you'll
appreciate why SC2 seems to be inspired by WWI/WWII naval
combat (as opposed to present day, where we just launch 50
missiles from 5000 miles away).

As captain in SC2, you are primarily responsible for issuing orders
like firing weapons, prioritizing repairs, transporting mines/space
bombs into open space, thus you have some control over the
actual ship that is intuitively manipulated entirely through the
mouse alone. There are keyboard shortcut keys to help you
manage through the sometimes-frantic pace of combat. SC2
combat is really about power or energy management. Should you
divert more powers to reinforce shields at the expense of turning
off those photon torpedoes? Should you attempt to run away by
putting more energy into your engines instead of your weapons? These are the questions that
are pressed onto the captain of the ship. What I missed most
though was some sort of autonomy in the various crew members.
True, there are crew voices that notify you if the hull is damaged,
or which side of your shields are gone, but I would have rather
preferred them to offer suggestions at various points of the game.
Or even better, it could help me manage the ship better. There
were many times when I queued up assault shuttles but just plain
forgot to launch them because you can't launch them all out in
succession, rather you must do it one by one. If these tedious tasks
were done by the computer or, at the very least, the crew could
notify me if the shuttle bay or transporters were ready, then I think
I would have had a much easier time. Part of the reason why the
crew should be more responsive is because you are constantly
switching between the different sections of the ship: science,
weapons, transporter, shuttle, damage, etc. There is no one
comprehensive panel that provides the captain with all the essential information
he/she needs to know. I thought this was sorely lacking but
perhaps all the flipping around makes the game more challenging.
The AI in the game is often competent but I found it rarely was
aggressive enough, for example, they never seem to sacrifice
power to other systems for that extra edge.

The piece de resistance of AI in this game is Dynaverse II, which is
the system used both in the single player campaign mode and the
multiplayer universe. Dynaverse II puts the player in the middle of
an intergalactic struggle complete with hex maps indicating each
race's sphere of influence. The Federation is by far the most
competent (another reason to play them) in terms of technology,
economy and sheer size. When you begin, you begin near the
homeworld and you can travel throughout your empire in
something that resembles a turn-based game. Other ships are also
nearby doing the same thing. Periodically missions will be offered
to you in various sectors. If you're towing a starbase (yes you can
fight as a starbase too), you'll get missions to erect a starbase. If
you are in the neutral zone, you'll get patrol missions so you can
claim that sector. If you're in a friendly sector, you might get a
convoy escort or base defense mission. These are all dynamically
generated and peppered within these are various scripted
missions that move the storyline along. SC2 introduces two new
campaigns, the war against the ISC and the conflicts of the Mirak
Star League. This isn't anything new, earlier Tachyon: The Fringe
and even earlier, Privateer, have done this but Dynaverse II
creates a living galaxy because not all the actions revolve around
the player. Throughout the game, empires will grow or shrink
depending on things like the economy. You can buy, refit, re-stock
ships depending on your prestige within your empire. This is
gained through performance in actual missions, for example, if
you protect all ships in a convoy from destruction, you'll get much more prestige than
having only one survivor (kind of like Force Commander).
Missions can be refused or forfeited but you must take a prestige
hit or if you have multiple ships, they will often confiscate one.
The combat is never boring because Dynaverse II 'stacks the cards'
in the battles. If you are a lone frigate attacking a starbase, you'll
often find incredibly strong allies whereas if your fleet is powerful
enough to take on an entire planet, you'll find yourself facing
down a force many times your size. Scripted missions are preset
though and if you cheat in the beginning of the game, you can
often gain an enormous advantage in the scripted missions but
those missions usually challenge you in areas other than brute
strength. One small fault about Dynaverse II is the fact that often
I'm far away from any starbase to restock or repair and a scripted mission is given to me. Thus, I
have to refuse, take a hit in prestige and drag myself all the way
back to a starbase. Other times, I'm aching to go on a mission and
can't find one even after traveling through five sectors. After
traveling through each sector, there is specific news that crop up:
space monsters can invade, empires can lose sectors or alliances can be made.

Dynaverse II however, does not extend to LAN play, which is a big
disappointment for me. Regular TCP/IP, IPX, or Mplayer play only
includes specific engagements. You can engage in base assaults
and tournaments in various locales like nebulae or asteroid fields.
There is also an option to play hockey with a tractor beam.
Dynaverse II can be played online through flipside.com although I
never had a chance to play it. It supposedly mixes
real players with AI in an epic struggle between the different star
empires. It is a phenomenal idea but I'm not sure how it is to be
executed. Definitely, multiplayer makes engagements more fun, as
human players tend to run away from battles and force the players
to rely on cat and mouse tactics (similar to submarine combat).
Originally, Dynaverse II was supposed to work with the now
defunct Won.net and it was hastily created to work with
flipside.com, so it has been a rocky start. Nevertheless, it's a
wonderful idea.

Technically SC2 is basically the same as the previous Starfleet
Command except you get new missions, so for those who already
have the original, it may not be entirely worth it. SC2 features a
3D engine that is capable of 800x600 to 1280x1024 but all of the art
seems geared towards 1024x768. The graphics are decent but not
earth shattering. Though they are all in 3D, this game has little to
no Z-axis elevation, meaning that if you look at the game top-down
it plays somewhat like a 2D RTS game. This is actually not a
fault but a design decision, since I'm sure the elimination of a
Z-axis reduces the chances of getting lost. You can still get lost
though. For example, on a convoy escort mission, in a ship with
poor sensor range, I often lost track of the entire convoy because I
was busy chasing off another ship. In the end, the time spent to
travel back to the convoy was just not worth it. There are also
other quirks, like one where I was protecting a starbase but the
structure blew up just about as I was forfeiting the mission. The
debriefing for this mission said I still had an "astounding victory"
and I could immediately restock at this new starbase. Some of the
missions aren't believable. For example, every new starbase
construction is challenged even if it's 20 hexes in the heartland of
your empire. Sometimes when you're busy fortifying one side of
the empire, the other AI players don't seem to be pulling their
weight. Often the empires stagnate because each side just wants
to continue the status quo.

Although the graphics may not be top notch, the sound effects are
incredibly well done. They are truly faithful to the Star Trek
license and it made some battles so realistic that I thought I was
watching something on television. One minor complaint is the
usage of English. I was hoping maybe the Klingons would speak
in Klingon so as to make the game more authentic. If the interface
panels are all written in foreign languages, I can't imagine why
the crew sounds are all in English. Some of these panels are so
alien, it takes some settling down to perform some run of the mill
tasks (sending you to your doom if you're trying to figure out how
to fire your weapons). As my esteemed colleague in Game-Over
points out, the zany layout of Star Trek GUIs don't help either.

Besides these minor quirks, SC2 is a deep and complex foray into
the Star Trek universe. The sheer amount of acronyms for the
different spaceships alone is a testament to that fact. The
campaign against the ISC is fun and engaging, although it would
have been nice to see the Borg show up but Paramount likes to
parcel out their license material among the different developers.
The Klingons, for example, are always at war with the
Federation, which isn't really the truth on the television show at
least. Just as the television franchise is hitting a speed bump with
Voyager, the Star Trek franchise in gaming seems to be improving
dramatically. Titles like SC2 go a long way in solidifying the Star
Trek name in the annals of PC gaming.